LinkedIn Role Model, 2020
Bachelor Thesis
User Experience, User Interface, Interaction Design,
Service Design, Branding
Service Design, Branding
How can Chinese-Immigrant parents and their Canadian-born children find common ground in decision making, to determine the child’s future pathways?
Background
Problem
Design Opportunity
Problem
Design Opportunity
The current career planning course in Ontario holds
little consideration for children of Chinese immigrant families who may have specific parental expectations to consider and uphold. For many, the passion they want to pursue after high school is not always supported by their parents.
By designing a system that takes into account
familial expectations, we create space for important conversations to take place in order to help Chinese-Canadian students bridge their ideal future trajectory with their parent’s expectations.
LinkedIn Role Model is a family-oriented career
planning tool for high school students. It contains a set of educational tools designed to open up discussions between Chinese-Immigrant parents and Chinese-Canadian children on parental expectations on future trajectories. Learning modules formulate a common ground between the two perspectives, giving the child tools to negotiate their future and allowing for parents and children to build potential pathways together.
little consideration for children of Chinese immigrant families who may have specific parental expectations to consider and uphold. For many, the passion they want to pursue after high school is not always supported by their parents.
By designing a system that takes into account
familial expectations, we create space for important conversations to take place in order to help Chinese-Canadian students bridge their ideal future trajectory with their parent’s expectations.
LinkedIn Role Model is a family-oriented career
planning tool for high school students. It contains a set of educational tools designed to open up discussions between Chinese-Immigrant parents and Chinese-Canadian children on parental expectations on future trajectories. Learning modules formulate a common ground between the two perspectives, giving the child tools to negotiate their future and allowing for parents and children to build potential pathways together.
Key Findings
After speaking with Kevin Lai, a
youth outreach worker from Hong
Fook Mental Health Association about his experiences with hosting community workshops, I gained three key insights on common interactions between Chinese-immigrant parents and their children.
What is LinkedIn
Role Model?
LinkedIn Role Model is a learning platform implemented in Career Studies, a mandatory course for Grade 10 Secondary students in Ontario.
Role Model?
LinkedIn Role Model is a learning platform implemented in Career Studies, a mandatory course for Grade 10 Secondary students in Ontario.
Discover, Empathize, and Explore. It brings parents and children through three stages.
Discover—getting to know the self, Empathize—understanding the other’s perspective, and Explore—envisioning various futures together, in the form of virtual and physical learning modules.
How Does it Work?
System Map
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Interaction Map
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Module 1: Discover
Parents and children define what success means to them
LinkedIn Role Model understands the importance of definition. We guide students and parents through the first module to help them each determine and define what success really means to them.
This groundwork allows them to begin their conversations with a basic understanding of one another.
Module 2 & 3: Empathize
Reflect on the child’s greatest strengths
The second module invites students to list out their greatest strengths, and invites their parents to input their children’s greatest strengths.
Commonalities between parent and children are highlighted in the results section
Once complete, answers are displayed in each section. Common traits that are picked by both parent and child are highlighted.
Common Ground, the game is printed from your profile page
The third module in “Empathize” is a PDF game, Common Ground that can be printed out from the website.
Play to get to know the other person’s career values
Parents and children write down their ideal careers and flip them face-down. Then, each player answers the question, “What values are must-haves in an ideal career?” by covering up every option except for their top two ideals from each category (internal, external, lifestyle).
The ideal careers they wrote down in the beginning are revealed at the end, and a conversation is had about whether or not each player’s ideal career for the child matches their desired values.
Parents and children write down their ideal careers and flip them face-down. Then, each player answers the question, “What values are must-haves in an ideal career?” by covering up every option except for their top two ideals from each category (internal, external, lifestyle).
The ideal careers they wrote down in the beginning are revealed at the end, and a conversation is had about whether or not each player’s ideal career for the child matches their desired values.
Save Common Ground answers into your profile
Answers from the Common Ground card game are input into the child’s account as part of the career planning course homework.
Phase 3: Explore
Parents and children can explore a variety of profiles in different job sectors together based on location, level of expertise, gender, and different companies.
Browse through profiles of industry professionals to get timelined insights into their experiences
Experiences are grouped by Education, Discovery, and Work. The size of the dots on the timeline indicate the level of impact each event had on the professional.
Each profile give a detailed account of what a busy day on the job looks like.
Students can comment on profiles, interact with industry professionals via messages, and keep updated by following specific profiles.
Explorations
Through the semester, I explored and prototyped different solutions based on primary and secondary research by changing variables such as perspective (parent, child, therapist), setting (home, school, therapy office), and medium (digital, physical).
